Evaluation Sourcebook (.pdf) - School of Natural Resources and ...

INTRODUCTIONWHAT MAKES A GOOD INDICATOR?You will be faced with choosing among many possible measures of your project’s progress.To help you make these decisions, we provide specific guidelines for evaluating ecological,social and organizational objectives, threats and assets and strategies at the beginning ofeach of major section in this book.You can also use the following set of general criteria, developed by many researchers andpractitioners 1 .A good indicator is:‣ Relevant and useful to decision-making• Provides information that can be used to test management effectiveness andhelp make strategic choices• Provides information that can be acted upon or used to motivate action‣ Easy to interpret• Has a clear, well-documented or understood link to particular attributes orstresses of the system• Has low or understood levels of background variation and humanmeasurement error so that these can be distinguished from changes ofinterest‣ Sensitive to change• Responds quickly enough to key stresses or other influences to allowadaptive management in response to these changes• Has potential to provide an early warning signal‣ Feasible and cost-effective to obtain• Is already being collected, is accessible at low cost or is feasible in terms ofequipment, time and expertise, to collect and analyze• Could feasibly be collected repeatedly• Is not overly destructive to collect‣ Easily communicated to target audience• Is understood by different audiences, such as decision-makers, scientists andthe general public• Can be summarized or compiled into simple indices, charts or pictures1 A good review of literature on the criteria of a good ecological indicator is available through the National ParkService Monitoring Internet (http://science.nature.nps.gov/im/monitor/index): Example Criteria andMethodologies for Prioritizing Indicators: http://science.nature.nps.gov/im/monitor/docs/CriteriaExamples.docEcosystem Management Initiative 6